7 Responses to “At the Corner” by Frank Villafane

First of all, it was evening, so I needed to use a high ISO, 1600 in this case. This is necessary to get a fast enough shutter speed (1/3s) so the image doesn’t appear blurry due to shake. No movement in the frame, so 1/3s was fast enough. D600 can shoot safely up to about 2500 without any noticeable noise (3200 with some judicious NR).

Second, I used a wide open aperture (f/4.0) to get the maximum amount of light to hit the sensor (DOF wasn’t that important here).

Finally, I leaned against the building across the street (1 South St) to steady the shot. I wanted to get the entire building in the frame, so I used the lens at the widest focal length (24mm) and tilted the camera up and took a vertical shot (yes, VERTICAL).

Now I ALWAYS take a few shots of a scene, so I had a few to work with. I picked the best, a little clean-up and noise reduction in post and…voila! Converted to B&W using my favorite tool, Silver Efex Pro 2. When I finished it up, I liked this shot more than some of the ones I got on the 30th floor at Commerce Place with a tripod…go figure.

Beautiful shot of a lovely 1920s (?… I am in Los Angeles so that is my time period reference) Beaux Artes building… what city is this? After quite a bit of detective work (Googling) I settled for Baltimore… am I close?

Good Guess! It is indeed Baltimore, downtown Inner Harbor. I was attracted to the period architecture, which is why I shot the building in the first place. Spent a year in Miami and witnessed first-hand the Art Deco architecture in South Beach…unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a photographer then.

Wonderful work on this Art. In addition to the fantastic architecture I love the mauve tones against the gray and all the pattern repetition is so beautiful. Must have been a late night…only one car! How lucky is that!